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Meishazat
Meisha’s trees grew wherever they could. Noisy rainforests stretched from sea to savannah to desert; deciduous trees dropped their leaves off their gnarly branches for the winter; and up in the mountains and far from the equator, evergreens shrugged off snow. On the slopes of the Karlusira mountain range, the redwood trees of the Sikwayi forest towered, their evergreen tufts catching the sun. It was here, millennia ago, that the first Beshur elves hunted bears and wildcats with sharpened staves and sharper ears, and as they passed down the knowledge of the land and how to live on it, they passed down the magics they found as well. With the proper staff, a tribe’s Cindar could coax a cut flower to bloom or stop a poisonous cut from spreading, but they were little magics that did little things, and so the Beshur were a people of little consequence. The first book of the Deklamasiya tells of the first Shajar dryad, coaxed out of a redwood tree by a Cindar. In it, the Shajar took the form of a beautiful woman named Arba, and the Cindar named Sabaun fell in love instantly, wedding her by nightfall, but that is just allegory. In reality, the first Shajar was likely a short, stunted creature of lumpy bark, and though it might have approximated an elf in its number of limbs, it was more a creature than a woman. But the elves too were more creature-like back then, more brutish and primitive. Over millennia, the Beshur grew, and they taught their minds and forms to the Shajar, and in return, the Shajar made miracles of their connection to Meisha, and together, they gained dominion over all the kingdoms of life, especially the trees. The Sikwayi forest is a very different place than when the world was new. The redwoods still climb into the sky, but their stalwart trunks support hundreds of hamlets strung around and between on gargantuan vines. Abodes of living wood spiral up them, bridges and platforms swing between them, and on the ground, roads made of layered stone and sand cut through the verdant brush, carrying pointy-eared Beshur by the millions and leafy-haired Shajar by the hundred-thousands. All the roads lead to Loma, the great city. It stretches from the ground to the boughs, and the forest is so dense there that the trees lace together into walls of tall buildings, casting shade onto the streets. At the center, a great garden grows open to the sky, surrounded by a spring that mists over the bright flowers and pours four cool streams down the middle of the four main streets. Olive street carries a stream to the east, babbling through the high arch of the Meishid. Trees and plants of all sorts grow in the vast open, a circular space so wide that the distance between the vine-covered redwood walls makes them appear slightly blue, and pilgrims reel with wonder. Gently-sloped vines lead up to balconies and walkways that trace all around, chapels decorated with the likenesses and relics of Meisha’s champions with supplicants laying flowers and offering prayers with their palms and foreheads to the ground. The ceiling is a dome formed of spiraling vines, articulated by Shajar to let light through in places and hide it in others, and right on time, the vines spread open to cast a vivid slant of light onto a stump in the center: the Kutuk, the sacred remains of the world tree. From out of the brush, Beshur and Shajar supplicants sit up, revealing themselves in the thousands on their knees around the stump. From the rear cloister, a cortege of Shajar clergymen in their robes of office form a solemn procession. As they walk two-by-two up a long slope to the stump, plants spring to flowering at their feet, leaving a trail of spring colors behind them. Two of them carry smoking bundles of incense, two of them carry a lectern, two of them carry a massive tome, and two of them support the arms of a very tall dryad between them. Even hunched, he stands a few heads taller than the other Shajar. His robes are decorated with silver and priceless emeralds, a cape of moss trailing behind him. The bark of his face is warped and scarred, and though all Shajar’s eyes are black, his bear a particular deepness, an ancient pallor. Ata Siricius the First hunches patiently as the tome is set upon the lectern and opened to a page, and holding his dark, knobbly hands to his robed chest, he draws a breath, and scanning down the page, he intones the teachings of the Deklamasiya, singing in the holy language of Sylva. He intones the story of Yahya, a farmer of apples being called from her home, no longer to tend her orchard, but to tend the vast orchards of her Mother the world wide. When the reading is done, he turns a kind eye to his flock. They watch in rapt attention. “Soon,” the Ata says in the common tongue, “many of you will leave this planet, our ancestral home. You will leave your Mother behind, and you will go without her nurturing aid to where nothing grows, even the most tended, resilient saplings. That has been the dream and the fear of our peoples for centuries, and after so many years, it seems we are quickly approaching the rim of the world. There is a worry among you that by leaving this place, you will be abandoning your faith, that you will be leaving your Mother behind.” He gestures solemnly to the page with a smooth, gentle sweep of his dark, wooden hand. “I am reminded, of the plight of Yahya, a young woman who was called to leave her home, to leave everything she knew, and to wander alone in the vastness of the world. She fears, and she questions, but she knows what the Mother calls her to do. It is the same calling that She has for us. She calls us out into the universe, to spread her garden.” He holds his arms out, a placid smile on his face. “By leaving this planet, we do not leave the Mother’s reach,” he says. “We are her arms, extending it. Bueluh.” “Bueluh,” the supplicants repeat, a dull roar echoing off the walls, up through the vines and out into the cerulean sky as the sermon continues. Unnoticed by them, a ship with enormous leaf-shaped wings crosses in front of the slivers of two moon, soaring on the rare air like an albatross. Category:Nationbuilder IX: Stationbuilder